1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to computerized data processing and search technologies. More particularly, and without limitation, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for providing a list of probable target addresses using hierarchically organized data relating to geographic locations in response to input of a character string.
2. Background
Use of the Internet and mapping services has grown significantly in recent years. Internet access is now available from a variety of devices, such as personal computers, laptops, tablets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, smart-phones, televisions, and other devices. With the increased access to the Internet from a wide variety of devices, people have become more reliant than ever on online mapping services where they submit queries seeking desired location information and directions to various destinations.
Online web services offer a variety of different search engines for finding location information from a large pool of available information. Both generalized search engines and specialized search engines are available which provide mapping services. These mapping services may specifically be utilized for navigating a user to a location. For example, destination information may be searched for utilizing generalized web searches by utilizing Google™ and Bing™. Alternatively, specialized search engines are available for searching for geographic or map information such as Google Maps™ and Mapquest™.
There are a variety of different ways in which search engines allow users to enter queries regarding geographic locations. For example, some search engines provide a field for entering a search query in a natural language format, and analyze the query in an attempt to determine the user's meaning before conducting the search. Such an analysis may involve separating the query into words, and attempting to derive a context from the ordering of the words in the query. A database may then be parsed to determine all possible matches.
The prevalence of Internet access and the availability of a wide variety of online mapping services makes it easier for people to search for addresses and location information by parsing databases. Nevertheless, it can still be difficult for users to find desired location information without significant user intervention because, for example, there may be cities with the same or similar names in multiple states or in some cases there may be similar addresses present in multiple cities or regions. For example, most cites located in the United States contain a “Main Street.” As a result, a user may enter a search query regarding location information only to find that the desired information is buried within the returned results. At that point, users often attempt to enter additional information and try again. Trying to decipher what details to enter in each refined search is a tedious process and takes away from the efficiency of quickly accessing the desired information. Furthermore, requiring a user to manually parse through all of the search results to determine the desired information is inefficient.